Intro

Hello everybody, I'm glad to be here to share this work with you.Â In this Making Of article I will talk you through some of my techniques and share some of my knowledge of the environmental rendering of this piece.

This ship was used to transport treasures; it disappeared without any trace near the Arctic Circle during a shipment. Â No one knows the reason for her disappearance, but in this image she has been rediscovered, and the expedition is aiming to find the answer of the secret which has remained unknown... until now!

Custom Brushes

First of all, I started off by creating some special custom brushes (Fig.01 - 02).

Fig. 01

Fig. 02

Here I created a texture! Â For this, a black and white picture was preferred. Â I then clicked Edit > Define Brush Present to create the new brush (Fig.03).

Fig. 03

After naming the brush, I pressed F5 on the keyboard to bring up settings for it. Â Please see Fig.04 - 05 for reference.

Fig. 04

Fig. 05

I generally take notes for my own ideas to use as reference as I work, which help me to understand what I want to express in my images. Â I'll then make several coloured drafts using rough shapes, trying to achieve some interesting elements with them. For example, with this piece, the two expedition members in the foreground of Fig.06 are important elements that 'pop out' from the main theme of the image. Â In fact, the draft is my favourite step of the whole concept process!

At this stage, the mood and structure of the whole production had to be settled upon, which was of great importance in the creation of this image (Fig.06).

Fig. 06

As the next step, I decided whether any additional software was necessary in order to express the content of the production.Â Using this piece as an example, 3D software helped me to build up the complex perspective relationship that I required, in the shortest time possible. Â It's simple for a camera to view the environment from every angle in 3D software, and using this technology I also discovered that a helicopter in the clear sky would act as a complimentary object in the scene (Fig.07).